After speaking to my dad for about half an hour or so on the phone, I began to realize that in writing these posts about the Red Wings jersey that my dad didn’t so much care about the symbolism of the thing itself, but rather the memories that he associated with the process of making Bueller and his life before and since that point. Elaborating on the previous post about the Wrigley Field game in ’02, it was a lot more momentous than I remembered.When I asked about what my dad felt when he was called onto the field, he simply said “I honestly don’t remember. It just kind of happened. I was more happy about everyone being there. You remember Michael Stepanek and his kids? And I think Tom Joyce was there too. And Jack Hickey and his kids. Something like that” and it was then that I realized that it was places like Chicago and friends like these that were far more important to my dad than any single movie or production he’d worked on. This huge swath of my mom and dad’s old Chicago friends were at the game; the Hickeys, the Stepaneks, Tom Joyce, literally all these people that I’ve only met in passing or been familiar with but never perhaps friendly and it became immediately clear to me that the jersey itself wasn’t the focus of his life. He had gotten past that. He’d moved on but looked wistfully back at who he’d met, why he’d done things, when and where too. My dad realized that a simple jersey he’d worn in a movie would simply always be just a jersey to him; it wasn’t about the shadow that that image would cast on impressionable American teenagers to him, it was about his experiences and his own personal connections with people that were far more significant to him.

Then our conversation changed, he had something to say but almost immediately forgot what it was; “God I can’t remember anything anymore. I used to have such a good memory. I don’t even remember what I did yesterday!” I said almost he same thing back to him, how I couldn’t remember much beyond what i’d done in the previous few hours until talking to him. But then my dad said something I didn’t expect, “See I think I get it from your Grandpa, when him and my mom started dating, they would go out to the movies. Because, you know, a movie would be a nickel or something. And when I’d watch reruns on tv of older stuff with him, he’d always be able to point out obscure actors and actresses. So later on when I was in college, i’d be with Jack (Hickey) and we’d do the same exact thing and Jack would always say, ‘how the fuck do you know all this stuff!?’ But I can’t remember much of any of that stuff anymore. Ah well.” From that point on in our conversation, I knew that the little details of his career were unimportant, it was his life and his experiences that really meant the most to him. Like I said before, I don’t really know Jack Hickey. From what I know, he’s a crazy college pal of my dad’s. But that’s okay, because much like how the jersey means comparatively little to my dad, I know that it’s not about the specifics, but of the big picture looming in your face. As cliche as it sounds, like a pointillism painting it’s not about the individual dots that make up the picture it’s the image that forms over time that truly leaves a lasting imprint.